South-South reciprocal trade agreements continue to surge in popularity despite arguments that they are a sub-optimal trade choice relative to North-South agreements or non-discriminatory trade liberalization. S-S agreements include both new agreements as well as efforts to revive or re-design ‘old’ integration schemes by widening their scope and ‘deepening’ the integration processes. At the same time, Northern countries and regional arrangements, most notably the EU, are seeking to form trade agreements between themselves and existing South-South blocks or individual countries.

The development implications of forming S-S and N-S agreements are not yet fully understood. In addition, the legal implications of the co-existence of both types of agreements are unclear, both from a WTO and regional perspective.

This workshop seeks to address, within the context of a broader concern about the development potential of S-S agreements, the compatibility issues of N-S and S-S agreements, both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective.

Some of the specific issues to be considered are:

Are S-S and N-S agreements driven by similar or different economic and/or political logics?